Our goal in the article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. These rules below provide guidelines on what we are and aren’t looking for in your comments.

We appreciate your willingness to participate, and toward that end have included some recommended reading:

While we’re here, a quick note about the First Amendment: The First Amendment has everything to do with the government and whether the government can censor a citizen’s speech, and has nothing to do with what rules a corporation imposes on what the corporation publishes on its website. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amen ... nstitution

Also, a quick note about what happens if you do happen to violate the rules here: You’ll get a warning. If you accumulate warnings quickly enough you’ll be permanently banned. It’s easy to get upset at your first warning, and we urge you to understand it’s nothing personal.

Some general recommendations:

Be respectful of others. It may be difficult to respect strangers, especially when the strangers disagree with you -- but it’s necessary.

If most of your comments are hostile, insulting or annoying, it’s probably best if you went and started writing on your own blog.

Here are our article commenting ground rules:

1. Keep your language cleanIncluding profanity in your comments violates the rules. If your comment contains foul language, in any language, veiled or not, it could be flagged, and if it is flagged -- or discovered by a moderator -- it will be deleted.

2. Making fun of the dead, injured or humiliated is really, really, low; same goes for wishing harm or death on othersSo low that we don't allow it on our site. Comments like these poke fun, ridicule or make light of someone who has died, been injured or already been publicly humiliated.

Examples include comments along the lines of:

“Stupid is as stupid does…”

“Darwin Award candidate…”

Whether you think your comment is innocuous or not, please be aware that family members of the deceased, injured or humiliated also read these comment threads. We know because we hear from them. Comments you might make to friends and family in passing carry extra weight when they appear on the forum. Please ask yourself if you are about to post something insensitive before you click “send.”

3. Personal attacks, taunts, baiting, name-calling, and threats have no place in civil discussionWe appreciate civil discussion here, and we don't appreciate it when people attempt to hijack civil discussions.

When you make a personal attack against another member in public, you're taking a discussion out of one of ideas and into one of personalities. You're also wasting the time and attention of those who aren't involved in your battle. Calling another person names is a sure sign you have no arguments left to make -- don't do it.

Bottom line: Keep your comments focused on the issues, not on other commenters or the subjects of stories.

4. Posting hate / stereotyping / intimidating speech makes this place a worse place to beComments that stereotype, intimidate or are hateful toward an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, or disability will be removed.

Adding language that declares a large body of people as “typical” violates this rule. Examples of this are: “Typical of Republicans…” or “Why am I not surprised Liberals are behind this?” Or “He was a Muslim, shocking. Or “Just another Christian fairy tale…”

These statements may be your opinion, which you have every right to have, but when posted on the forum they are almost always perceived as provocative and offensive by some of our readership. Such comments will be removed.

5. Avoid repeating yourselfWhen you repeatedly post the same or similar comment, you're telling the world you have nothing new to say. If you have nothing new to say, why are you saying it? Don't.

Instead of posting the same / similar stuff, post a link to your old comment, and explain why you think that old comment is relevant to the current conversation.

Specifically: Do not post a comment that is derived in whole or in part from your previous comments.

Repeating yourself goes beyond verbatim repetition of the same post. If you are stuck on one theme from thread to thread and other forum members bring it to our attention, you may be warned and your comments might be deleted.

6. Stay relevant, pleaseWriting irrelevant comments is easy and fun for you, but boring and a waste of time for everyone else. Examples of such comments:

One that has little or nothing to do with the subject of the article.

One that has little or nothing to do with the current conversation.

One that is crafted to completely change the direction of the conversation.

We all have pet peeves. Make sure yours is quite relevant before sharing it in the comments.

7. Cutting and pasting chunks from other sites is usually bad. So is infringing on other sites’ copyrights. So is making modifications to cut and pasted chunks, and then posting those.It's particularly bad when the entirety of your comment is from another website.

Instead of cutting and pasting everything, cut and paste a representative quotation, link back to the original, and then explain why you think this quote is relevant.

This includes cutting and pasting your own work from another website, or comments you’ve made on other forums.

Please, don't post a comment that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party.

8. Quoting offensive comments can set you up to be deleted yourselfThis rule is tricky: If we delete a comment, and you have replied to that comment, to get rid of the offending comment we need to delete your comment as well. That means your excellent response will have to go. Paraphrase or refer to the poster in order to rebut those thoughts. Even better: Flag the comment you're replying to, and save yourself the time.

9. Take advantage of our private messaging functionalityIf you have something to say, but it's something directed and specific to another member, instead of posting it for everyone, send them a PM instead.

If you PM another forum member and they ask you to stop messaging them you must respect that request. It is not mandatory for one member of the forum to communicate with any other. If you are told by another forum member that they no longer want to continue a specific discussion or have any future communication, you must respect that. If you do not you can be warned and possibly banned from the forum as with any other offense.

"The communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always, a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant)."

11. Don't just link to your own blog post, or use our forums as a vehicle for self-promotionIf you write a comment that consists of nothing but a title and a link to your own blog, well, you're not really contributing to the discussion -- you're just advertising your own stuff.

12. Don't invade a person's privacyExamples of comments that may invade a person's privacy include:

Publishing a private citizen's email address, phone number or address without their permission (publishing office information for, say, government officials is fair).

Publishing information about a person's family without their permission.

This includes making claims about private citizens (e.g. an alleged victim of a crime, a party in a prominent lawsuit.) in the news that are not easily verifiable.

13. Be yourself, and be truthfulComments that purport to be from any person or entity not yourself, including but not limited to a Denver Post employee, will be removed. Don't pretend to be someone you're not.

Comments that falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity will be removed. Comments that fabricate, deceive or mislead will be removed.

Also, use your real first and last name, and an email address that you check regularly. It's clear this is an unenforceable rule, but moderators give more consideration and respect to board members who follow this.

If you’re claiming to be an involved party, public official, or victim, please send a PM to the admins/moderators group with your phone number and address so we can verify your identity if necessary.

14. Signing up multiple accounts isn't allowedMultiple accounts are often used by those who want to avoid being banned. If we ban you temporarily, that means we want you to take a break from the site. If we ban you permanently, that means we don't want you to write anything more on our site.

Don't post links to Not Safe For Work (NSFW) sites without warningFor our sake, and the sake of the employers of the readers of our site, do not link to Not Safe For Work (NSFW) information without warning others it is NSFW.

We added an introduction to the site ground rules, which includes some tips and recommendations about how to get along on our site.

We added "baiting" to the third ground rule, "Personal attacks, taunts, baiting, name-calling, and threats have no place in civil discussion. We also added to the third ground rule was a bit about ad hominem attacks.

We condensed several rules into rule number seven, "Cutting and pasting chunks from other sites is usually bad. So is infringing on other sites’ copyrights. So is making modifications to cut and pasted chunks, and then posting those."

We added some clarification to the ninth rule, "Take advantage of our private messaging functionality."

We combined two rules into rule 13, "Be yourself, and be truthful."

We combined many rules under the fifteenth rule, "The Common Courtesy rules."

What about getting a notification when your post is deleted? I ask, because I seem to have annoyed someone so much that they are tracking and deleting virtually everything I post.

Yes, I get heated sometimes...but not EVERY time. It would be nice to get some feedback from the moderator concerning why a post was considered offensive enough to be deleted. How can I get better if I don't know what I did wrong?

But in fact, I suspect that some "rival" forum user is hitting the "Report Abuse" button every time he sees my tag, and the moderators just automatically remove it, regardless of content. This sort of Kafhaesque censorship is random and very frustrating.

Someone posted that Obama was an "uppity ****. I declared that remark to be stupid and bigoted. The DP banned me for 30 days, for "making racist remarks", proving that reading comprehension isn't required for DP moderators.

Drax21 wrote:What about getting a notification when your post is deleted? I ask, because I seem to have annoyed someone so much that they are tracking and deleting virtually everything I post.

Yes, I get heated sometimes...but not EVERY time. It would be nice to get some feedback from the moderator concerning why a post was considered offensive enough to be deleted. How can I get better if I don't know what I did wrong?

But in fact, I suspect that some "rival" forum user is hitting the "Report Abuse" button every time he sees my tag, and the moderators just automatically remove it, regardless of content. This sort of Kafhaesque censorship is random and very frustrating.

Hi Terry,

I took a look at the notes on your record -- we deleted a comment of yours in late August for personal attacks.

Two or so years ago we included functionality that notified readers every time a comment was deleted. By most accounts it was a bad idea. You will lose some of your comments to abuse reports, that's a fact of these boards.

For reference, we delete about 75% of the comments that get flagged. Not all of them. We review every one of the abuse reports.

Two or so years ago we included functionality that notified readers every time a comment was deleted. By most accounts it was a bad idea. You will lose some of your comments to abuse reports, that's a fact of these boards.

For reference, we delete about 75% of the comments that get flagged. Not all of them. We review every one of the abuse reports.

Thanks for participating,

Joe

Thank you for this quick response. In fact, I found a couple of my "missing" posts when I went back and looked again. They just weren't in the format I remembered. "Old Timers Disease" is playing tricks on me. Getting forgetful and grumpy.Thank you for your time.

TC

Someone posted that Obama was an "uppity ****. I declared that remark to be stupid and bigoted. The DP banned me for 30 days, for "making racist remarks", proving that reading comprehension isn't required for DP moderators.

Joe,From past experience on this site "personal attack" is a very subjective term.I think you will have even more difficulty achieving some sort of consistency in moderating the forum based on that criteria.

I am what I am - Popeye the SailorI don't care what you do, I wouldn't want to be like you - Alan Parson's Project

Most of the forums I've participated in before signing up here are much, much, MUCH more strict about personal attacks, or even posting information without reliable links to back up claims. I do realize that this is a newspaper and not a scientific forum, but I'd like to see higher standards.

I guess the realistic question—being as this is a for-profit site—is whether it is better to have a wider net of participation, or better conversations. Would a more heavily moderated site with better conversations draw more educated people, at least enough to make up for the loss of posters that can't help but resort to attacks and name-calling?

Personally, I think it's a wonderful idea; but then I'm not looking at the bottom line, just my personal experience.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”― Isaac Asimov

I would like to inquire about why banned users have the ability to thumb up or down. I notice some that are "lurkers" that can accrue 50-100 pts. a day doing so. Wouldn"t banned mean non-participating? Some lurkers are stalkers.

‎"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." ~John Adams

Yeah - I guess this skeptic must have a different definition of ad hominem than the one posted earlier from wikipeida. short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it

Because when I look up the definition in wikipedia, it says: short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it

It must be different definition. If it were the same, no way would there be so many ad hominem attacks on the forum.

You ** that moderate the DP online are really holding on to that double standard and affirmative action frame of mind. Stop leaning left and stop pandering to minorities. I have had multiple comments removed simply because I show the white/non liberal side of the subject when several other sides have had just as many attacks or stereotypes which were reported but not removed. I have had enough of this far left leaning, pro-illegal immigration, tax happy newspaper…..

Religion and politics, the two biggest causes of war.

"and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"

Talktothefinger wrote:You ** that moderate the DP online are really holding on to that double standard and affirmative action frame of mind. Stop leaning left and stop pandering to minorities. I have had multiple comments removed simply because I show the white/non liberal side of the subject when several other sides have had just as many attacks or stereotypes which were reported but not removed. I have had enough of this far left leaning, pro-illegal immigration, tax happy newspaper…..

Are you upset about the comment that we warned you for where you wrote "GAAANG BAAAANG!!! (hope she brings lube)"??? Because if so, I stand firmly behind our moderators on that.

We delete a lot of comments every day, of every political stripe. Just because we delete yours doesn't mean we're biased. It just means you broke the rules and a reader flagged your comment for review.

Talktothefinger wrote:You ** that moderate the DP online are really holding on to that double standard and affirmative action frame of mind. Stop leaning left and stop pandering to minorities. I have had multiple comments removed simply because I show the white/non liberal side of the subject when several other sides have had just as many attacks or stereotypes which were reported but not removed. I have had enough of this far left leaning, pro-illegal immigration, tax happy newspaper…..

Are you upset about the comment that we warned you for where you wrote "GAAANG BAAAANG!!! (hope she brings lube)"??? Because if so, I stand firmly behind our moderators on that.

We delete a lot of comments every day, of every political stripe. Just because we delete yours doesn't mean we're biased. It just means you broke the rules and a reader flagged your comment for review.

Happy commenting,Joe

No, I knew that one was out of bounds but it wasn't far off from some other comments on that particular thread that were NOT removed. I am talking about political and racially "sensitive" issues. The moderators there are more lenient on comments posted in favor of or by a "ethnic minority" than you are on caucasians. No one has the right to never be offended.

Religion and politics, the two biggest causes of war.

"and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"